One way to observe the South Downs Way is to walk along part, or if you're feeling brave, all of it. In good summer weather with plenty of long hours of light, this is an excellent way to completely immerse yourself in another way of life for a week. Forget the jet set, I'm talking about the sturdy boots set here!

The walk covers 100 miles in all from Winchesrer to Eastbourne with about 4150 m (13600 feet) of hills to climb and ascend whichever way you travel. It takes about 8 days to walk it (3 to cycle it) and you will climb as high as Butser Hill in Hampshire to 270m (900ft) and also Ditchling Beacon (East Sussex) at 248m (814ft).

You will mainly be walking on well maintained wide grassy or flinty tracks across the chalk downland, grazed by sheep on the hills with arable crops below; whilst the western part of the Downs tends to be composed of rolling farmland, the mid section of the West Sussex Downs are dominated by steep, sometimes wooded escarpments with good views

Although we see a lot of sunshine in April, it's in May that the strength of the sun really becomes apparent if you stay out in it for any length of time.

The sun is at its strongest at the time of the summer solstice, around June 21st but by early May it is as strong as in mid August and quite capable of causing sunburn, if you don't take the right precautions.

The average sunshine amount during May across England and Wales is about 200 hours, equating to around 7 hours per day but the sunniest Mays' can see more like nine or ten hours on average each day. As the far north sees increasingly long days, in the right conditions parts of Scotland can see a lot of warm sunshine; for example in May 1975 there were 329 hours recorded on the island of Tiree in the Outer Hebrides, Scotlands sunniest month ever.

Whilst we record the total hours of sunshine it is the strength of the sun that actually causes most problems, combined with how long you

April is generally the first month when you can actually start working in the garden again with some degree of comfort. It's great to get back outside in what is finally really warm Spring sunshine.

It's a really colourful month too ~ spring flowering versions of azaleas, rhododendrons & magnolias all start to come out. Time to feed the plants too. You should fertilise most annual, perennial and flowering shrubs and trees with a good plant food which will release nitrogen, potash, iron and other micro-nutrients slowly over the next few months to help the plants growth and overall development. Evergreens and deciduous shrubs and trees can be fed now as well with tree and shrub food, again it'll slowly release the above nutrients to help the plants development. If you have planted anything new this season use a starter plant food (preferably at the time of planting) so root growth is encouraged.

Freshly mulch flower beds: you may want to add a

Weather-Watch is a specialised forum for users of weather station software and in particular for the Weather Display family of products.

It is a UK base site but has more than 8,000 members world wide who between them have generated over 504,239 posts. Weather-Watch was started 10 years ago by Chris McMahon who manages it today with a team of moderators. Chris is also one of the developers behind MesoMap Live.

Follow the links bellow for a list of recent posts on particular subjects:

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March is the month when the Spring bulbs are out and start to give a good show. If you were on the ball and planted plenty of bulbs at the end of last year when the garden was looking dead and rather wet then the large amounts of sunshine in February (though not excessive warmth) may have helped push your displays on into bloom.

However, this is not the case everywhere by any means, as it is not really the amount of sunshine at this time of the year which brings the bulbs on. The temperature of the air and soil is the deciding factor, along with a good supply of moisture in the ground- though not too much. If anything the ground has actually been a little too dry recently, with the lack of expected rainfall in most parts. As I have mentioned regularly in the last few weeks in the 'blog' I put together here, although it was exceptionally sunny in February (East Anglia saw over twice the average sunshine it would normally expect for example) it was also

November already and as we lose an hour with the clocks back to GMT times for another six months, it now seems to darken very early. I used to worry, as a very young lad in late October, if it would be dark enough for fireworks at 7.30pm (my usual bedtime) by November 5th, but it always was! Something else I recall is that by then we would have gathered up huge piles of leaves ready to burn on the nights bonfire but recently many trees still seem yet to have shed their leaves by this date. So are we really seeing later leaf fall or is my old memory playing tricks?

Well, official research does seem to suggest that over the last thirty years, leaves have started to change colour and fall later in the year, a phenomenon that scientists now attribute directly to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Gail Taylor from the University of Southampton and her colleagues studied the growth and leaf fall of Populus trees (a genus which includes the poplar

Monthly retrospective for August 2016

The month was slightly above average temperature wise but rainfall was again variable due to the showery nature of the precipitation although very dry in places, and sunshine was near or somewhat above average- especially in the SE- but almost everywhere away from the far north.

The (Hadley) CET mean temperature was near 17.1C, about 1.3C above average with the mean minimum about 1.5C above.

Most parts of the north were about 0.5C above average but the south was generally a degree or more above average. The pressure was 2-3mb above average across the UK as a whole.

The warmest mean maximum was at Heathrow (Middsx) with 24.7C and the highest daily maximum was 33.9C at Gravesend (Kent), which was also the highest this summer.
The coldest mean minimum was at Aviemore (Highlands) with 8.9C, the coldest absolute minimum by night was at Dalwhinnie (Highlands) with -1.0C though some spots in this area were certainly a degree

Monthly retrospective for July 2016

The month was slightly above average temperature wise but rainfall was again variable due to the showery nature of the precipitation although very dry in places, and sunshine was again rather below average almost everywhere away from the far north.

The (Hadley) CET mean temperature was near 17.0C, about 1.0C above average. Most parts of the north and west were very close to average but a few parts in the east and SE were over a degree above average. The pressure was 2-3mb below average across the northern UK but a few millibars above in the south.

The warmest mean maximum was at Gravesend (Kent) & at London Heathrow (Middsx) with 24.0C and the highest daily maximum was 33.5C at Brize Norton (Oxon).

The coldest mean minimum was at Eskdalemuir (Dumfries & Galloway) with 9.6C, the coldest absolute minimum by night was at Altnaharra (Sutherland) with 0.5C.

June was generally a rather dry or very dry month in the

Monthly retrospective for June 2016

It was another month that was slightly above average temperature wise but rainfall was again very variable due to the showery nature of the precipitation although very wet in places, and sunshine was below average almost everywhere away from the far north.

The (Hadley) CET mean temperature was near 15.2C, about 1.1C above average. Whilst a few places were very close to average many parts were over a degree above average, and a few parts of north & NE Wales were nearly 2C above. The pressure was near average right across the northern UK but a few millibars below in the south.

The warmest mean maximum was at Pershore (Worcs) with 19.6C and surprisingly the highest daily maximum was 27.8C at Porthmadog (Gwynedd).
The coldest mean minimum was at Aboyne (Aberdeenshire) with 7.8C, the coldest absolute minimum by night was at Resallach, of -0.1C in the Scottish Highlands with -3C on the grass at Tulloch Bridge (Highlands)